We Almost More than Married Are
by lankypanky
Summary: Exceedingly slow domestic drama, very little plot movement.  Angsty, but with catharsis planned.  Quite soon after "Four Heroes."
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This is the goddamned nerdiest grad school geek pretentious shit I've launched on so far, and that's saying a lot. The epigraph for this is the first stanza of John Donne's sixteenth-century poem, "The Flea." It's sort of a silly, dirty poem - the (male) speaker of the piece is trying to convince his (virginal, female) love interest that, because they've both been bitten by the same flea, their blood is already commingled. It's therefore like they _already_ had sex, so why not just do it for real, now? Okay, it's a goofy image, but I do think that a lot of human relationship is bound together by invisible ties of blood - one way being the blood of relatives (children, parents, whatever) that we share. Another being blood from shared suffering or joy, those high, special places in our brains where we think we're the only person that lived through _that_ thing, and we feel very alone until we meet someone else who is running on that cylinder. And so there's this weird way in which sex is, in fact, less intimate than the ways in which we already have relationships with each other.

This really is going to be slow as hell. It is going to be huge and sprawling and chick-flick-y and gratuitous and SO SLOW. NOTHING HAPPENS EVER. It's a lot of stupid, petty people (aren't we all?) trying to not hurt themselves or anyone else as they flounder around in the wake of bizarrely damaging pain. (But you know what? Grace really has been through some shit, and Ethan really isn't that great a dad, and that's worth remembering.) And yeah, I was sick as hell when I started writing it. You probably shouldn't read it if you can't take a lot of graphic depictions of vomiting.

* * *

"The Flea" - John Donne

"MARK but this flea, and mark in this,  
How little that which thou deniest me is ;  
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,  
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.  
Thou know'st that this cannot be said  
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;  
Yet this enjoys before it woo,  
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;  
And this, alas ! is more than we would do."

* * *

Ethan Mars woke up, rolled over on the sofa in the dim dawn light, unable to figure out for a minute just what it was that had woken him. After the first few days, he had fairly well managed to overcome his initial disorientation at waking up in Grace's living room, and now it had become a sort of comfort, because when he saw the fabric of that ugly couch, he knew he was in the house where Shaun was. When he'd first been released from the hospital, he'd genuinely needed someone's help getting around, showering, getting himself fed – now, after the first week, that was no longer true. But neither he nor his ex-wife wanted to part from their son, and their slightly uncomfortable living arrangement had continued. It was hard, all of them dancing around each other, renegotiating each day just what their relationships were now, but at least the house had become familiar.

So it wasn't the strange room that was bothering him, not any more. His thoughts thickened by sleep, he slowly realized that his body was telling him something was wrong – he felt hot, ill. He managed to scramble his way into the first-floor bathroom and to the toilet just before his stomach clenched, hard, and he heaved up what remained of the previous night's dinner. He retched endlessly.

Stomach finally emptied, Ethan flushed the toilet, then slowly worked his way to his feet and into the kitchen. His hands shook slightly as he poured himself a glass of water – he was definitely coming down with something, an unwelcome complication. He began walking back towards the living room, sipping, and realized unhappily that his stomach was rejecting the liquid, as well. He was a bit farther away from his goal this time, and he left a trail of watery vomit on the bathroom floor before he reached the toilet. After he finished the second round, he sat down next to the stool, rubbing one eye, beginning to take a slow inventory of everything that wasn't working right.

His stomach was still cramping, though he doubted it contained anything worth throwing up at this point. It was hard to tell, but he thought he was running a fever – the skin across his chest definitely felt hot, raw, tight, and his joints had that telltale, tired ache. He thought about heading back to the sofa, then instead cautiously worked his way through another repetition of trying to keep the water in his stomach. It didn't go well. He leant back against the wall, frustrated, tired, and let himself drift mentally. The frustration was at the forefront; he'd finally started feeling better, having energy, and now, this. It felt as though he couldn't catch a break.

By the time he heard Shaun get up – he'd always been an early riser – Ethan's body had added chills to the mix, and he decided definitively on the fever. He felt lightheaded. He thought about closing the bathroom door as Shaun came down the stairs, decided it wasn't worth the effort.

"Dad?" Ethan looked wearily up towards the doorway, and managed a wan smile up at his son. Shaun was still in his pyjamas, peering nervously in at him. "Dad? Are you okay?"

"Think I'm getting sick. No, don't come in, I got some puke on the floor. It's pretty gross." Another wave of the chills shook him, hard.

"Do you want a blanket?" Shaun asked shyly.

"That would actually be great, Shaun. Just grab one of the ones I was using off the sofa." Shaun trailed away into the living room. Ethan grabbed a wad of toilet paper off the roll, wiped up the floor, and flushed it, gagging anew at the smell of that bile-stained water against his hands. Shaun reappeared, dragging one of the afghans that Grace's mother had given them, and Ethan wrapped it gratefully around himself. His shivering trailed off for the moment.

"Do you need anything, Dad?" Shaun was fidgeting, his face frozen somewhere between worry and an eagerness to help, and Ethan felt shame wash over him at their upended relationship.

"Not really. You can sit with me if you want, but it's not going to be very interesting. Could even be kind of disgusting. You might want to go watch cartoons." Instead, Shaun padded softly into the bathroom, and sat down next to him. "Careful, now, I don't want you to catch whatever it is I've got, okay?"

"How's your finger?" the boy asked. Ethan's mouth quirked upwards; he and Grace had decided that Shaun shouldn't be told just what had happened to his father's hand, but there was certainly no hiding it. Shaun had immediately been impressed when he'd noticed, fascinated by the gruesomeness of the stump, and tried to sneak a peek whenever he could. His slightly macabre curiosity worried Grace, but Ethan was pretty sure that it was just a consequence of Shaun being a ten-year-old boy.

"It's not too bad," the man replied. "Maybe later we can take a look at it, when I feel a little better."

"Do you want to play cards?"

Ethan's smile widened. "You're only asking because you know I'm sick and you want to finally beat me at Go Fish." Shaun gave him back a grin.

Then the chills came back, and they wouldn't stop. His chest was starting to ache dully. Ethan wondered again if he should just return to the couch.

"Dad? Should I go tell Mom?"

"Yeah," Ethan admitted. "Go tell her I'm sick, and then make yourself breakfast, how's that?"

"Okay," Shaun said, cheerful at having been given accomplishable tasks, and shuffled his way out of the bathroom. He was shouting before he had fully emerged, and Ethan's smile flickered back onto his face for a few seconds – it never failed that "go tell someone" something, for Shaun, always ended up meaning, "yell across the whole house."

"MOOOOM!" he shouted now. "Dad's sick! He's throwing up and stuff!" It wasn't a particularly pleasant description, but not an unfair one.

Upstairs, Grace Mars came more fully awake. She'd heard her son get up and had drowsily considered whether she should go down to help him with breakfast, then had decided that Ethan would probably like to do it; it didn't sound like that had turned out well.

"MOOOOOOOM!"

"I'm coming, Shaun!" She shrugged her way into her bathrobe and made her way down the stars. Shaun disappeared into the kitchen once he saw her. Grace only had to take one look at Ethan sitting on the bathroom floor – pale, sweaty, shivering, an afghan-wrapped mummy, before she sighed wearily.

"'Throwing up and stuff?'" she said, not unkindly.

"I think maybe I'm getting the flu," he responded. "I can't keep anything down."

She laid the backs of her fingers against his cheek to check his temperature and sighed again. "Want to try some Pepto?"

"Okay."

She went to the upstairs bathroom, used the toilet, washed her face and hands, and gripped the edge of the sink for a long moment, counting to ten, before grabbing the Pepto-Bismol and the thermometer out of the medicine cabinet.

Back downstairs, Ethan fumbled the pink bottle open and took a swig directly from it, then screwed the top back on and sat for a few seconds in deep concentration. He shook his head just before he lurched forwards again, convulsing, this time dribbling thick, pink liquid out of his mouth into the bowl. Wrinkling her nose, Grace let him finish and lean back into the wall before handing him the thermometer.

"Here," she said. "I'm going to go make sure Shaun doesn't destroy the kitchen." He nodded and stuck it under his tongue.

In the kitchen, Shaun had, in fact, more or less succeeded in getting together a bowl of cereal without creating a giant disaster. Grace put the heavy gallon of milk back in the fridge for him, then fondly tickled his armpit, and he squirmed away, poking at the bowl with his spoon. "Is Dad okay?" he asked.

Grace was so, _so_ tired of answering that question. She'd given up during Ethan's coma of always saying yes, of course he'd be okay, tried to be as honest as she could with Shaun, instead. Answering him during her ex-husband's apparently endless bouts of depression had stretched the limits of her abilities; this at least felt more manageable. "Well, you're right, he's sick. Probably have to go to the doctor."

"I think I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up," Shaun said thoughtfully, and looked hopefully at the sugar bowl.

"No sugar for breakf- " Grace started automatically, then stopped herself. "Oh, okay. Go ahead. One spoon. I thought you wanted to make video games."

"If I were a doctor, I could help people like Dad." He'd dived into the sugar eagerly, but caught the warning look in her eyes before he went in for a second spoonful. She felt the now-familiar rush of rage at Ethan for making medical emergencies such a part of his son's life, of her own, knowing that part of her anger was irrational, not caring.

"Want the comics with breakfast?" she asked, and he nodded. She fetched the newspaper off the front porch for him, carefully confiscating the news section, as she'd done every morning since he came home, and slid him the funny pages while he toyed with his cereal. "Here you go. I'm going to sort out your dad."

Ethan wiped at his sweat-slicked hair as she pulled the thermometer out of his mouth. "Oh, _Ethan_," Grace said, frustrated, as she peered at the numbers. "It's _high._ This is an emergency room trip." She began to formulate a plan of action – all three of them were still in pyjamas, which needed to be taken care of, Shaun was going to have to come with – and shook her head at him with helpless irritation.

"No, it's okay," he said, hugging himself. "Maybe I can get some pills to stick –" And that was the last straw, for Grace. She shut the door shut behind her, harder than she'd intended, so Shaun wouldn't hear her.

"It's pretty obvious that you _can't._ Listen, Ethan," she hissed at his startled face. "I don't know what your problem is. I don't know if you don't take care of yourself because you're not willing to or because you're not able to, but what I do know is this _shit,_" she swore so rarely that he flinched at the word, "Is over. When you get back on your feet again, when you move back into your own place, I am _not_ comfortable leaving him alone with you. I will legally renegotiate the custody agreement if I have to, but I think you know why you'd better not fight me on this."

He was floored. Grace felt a flinch of guilt at attacking him while he was already so miserable, but stuck to her guns. "That's not," he started, and readjusted the afghan, eyes narrowing. "That's not _fair_. This just came out of nowhere. I felt fine last night. Pretty much."

"Pretty much. Exactly. It's part of a pattern, Ethan. You were having blackouts that lasted for hours at a time while you were watching Shaun, and you _knew_ it, and you didn't do _anything_ about it. I didn't want to believe you were letting something like that happen, so I guess not asking you about my doubts is my fault. Mine. And I'm not making that mistake any more. What I see is you falling apart over and over again – mentally, physically, emotionally, whatever, and you _cannot_ make Shaun have to look after you."

He was struggling between guilt, and rage, and the rising throb in his chest. She was right, about the blackouts. Right, but it was so hard to admit it. "I can't believe you'd say that, after . . . after what we've all just been through. Hasn't what I've done made up for anything? Proved I care?"

"I know you _care_ about him, but that was _not _an example of being a good parent. That was an example of a crazy man forcing you to suffer because you care, and it's not the same th– I don't understand why you don't get this. Why you can't bother to keep yourself together enough to look after him all the time."

"What . . . what else could I possibly do?"

"_Get your act together_. I bet you _still_ can't take him to parades because of the crowds; I haven't seen you do anything about that. I'm right, aren't I?"

"It's hard –" he started.

"I'm sure it is. That doesn't excuse you from doing it."

"Mom? Dad?" They'd gotten too loud; both glared at each other in mutual warning, and then Grace leaned back again to open the door. Shaun knew better than to ask them if everything was all right between them; he knew the answer to that hadn't been "yes" for a very long time. But the question was on his face, anyway.

"Shaun," Grace started, "Go put some clothes on. You can put on yesterday's, if you want. We've got to take your dad to the doctor."


	2. Chapter 2

Shaun did, in fact, work his way into the previous day's outfit, as Grace had suspected he might – it was his favorite shirt. She decided that, without a shower, sweats were good enough for her, and Ethan, increasingly waxy-looking, made his way into a bathrobe that she fetched for him. He, still angry, shook off her hand on his elbow as he shivered his way out to the car, and Grace flared her nostrils in silent frustration. Shaun uneasily tried to fill the silence between them with chatter that each had trouble following because of their concentration – Grace on the road, Ethan on his discomfort, both on not continuing their argument in front of their son.

They put Ethan's name in at the emergency room, and sat to wait for it to be called. Grace started on the paperwork.

Shaun asked timidly, "Can I go look at the babies?" Grace was saddened, again, that Shaun knew the layout of the hospital well enough to make the request, to find his way there. And that, so soon after their ordeal, they were already fighting hard enough again to make Shaun uncomfortable. She didn't want to let him go, but knew it would be better if she did.

"Okay," she said. "But straight there and straight back, and you come right back here if anyone tries to talk to you, right?" He nodded, trudged off.

"You two don't have to stay," Ethan said, feeling foolish in his bathrobe, manipulated into his current location. His teeth chattered. "I can check myself in. You take Shaun to the park or something."

"You know he'll want to know what they say."

"Fine." He pressed gingerly at his chest, and grimaced.

His obstinance, the slowness of the waiting room, their own stony silence, was already more than she could stand. She pulled a bottle of aspirin out of her purse and pushed it towards him. "Here," she said, "you want to try to take care of it yourself? Take some."

He shook his head, looking straight ahead. "They're gonna come back up."

"I don't care," she said, dropped it into his lap, and folded her arms. "Do whatever you want."

He stared at the bottle for a second, then spitefully shook a few out into his palm, and swallowed them dry. The results were more spectacular than Grace's bluff had anticipated – Ethan bent forward almost immediately, coughing them up on to the floor with a thin stream of bile, and the rest of the room was suddenly paying the Mars couple _much_ more attention. He took a few deep breaths with his head between his knees, straightened up – and passed out entirely, slumping sideways in his chair. Flustered, Grace fumbled to hold him up, calling his name. Suddenly, they were at the center of some very, _very_ interested medical professionals.

He was only out for a minute or so, but it was enough to jump the queue and get him into a bed. Grace went after Shaun while they fussed with Ethan, stalling him with a tattered copy of Boy's Life and telling him to stay put – Shaun was always so nervous when Ethan was asleep, so sensitive to echoes of his six months of coma. She was glad he hadn't been around to see the faint.

When she found her way back to Ethan, she found that matters had already progressed significantly. It hadn't taken long for them to hook Ethan up with an IV for the dehydration and determine the underlying problem – the fading burn on his chest had become badly infected, as, the doctor told them both cheerfully, burns had an annoying tendency to do.

"I can see we sent you home with some antibiotics last time," the doctor continued. "Did you finish those?"

Ethan, shivering again, could feel Grace's eyes burning a hole in him while he decided whether or not to lie.

"Mr. Mars?"

"No," he finally admitted, and the sight, in his peripheral vision, of Grace methodically, deliberately, repeatedly zipping and unzipping her purse, shaking her head, told him just how badly he'd fucked this one up. She remained ominously silent during the medical version of the lecture about why that had been a bad idea, and Ethan could feel her building up a less technical version of her own. Even the doctor began to look as though he wanted to escape the weight of her smoldering presence.

"Well," the doctor finally concluded, "What you've got there is pretty aggressive. But we'll put you on some intravenous antibiotics for now, and you might only have to stay overnight."

It was still only late morning, and Ethan scowled a little at "overnight" through his haze. "I really don't want to spend another day in here," he said.

Grace snorted meaningfully. "You're not coming back to _my_ house tonight," she said. The doctor, visibly uncomfortable, explained that it _was_ for the best, then hurried out. There was a pause.

"I'm sorry I made you take the pills," Grace said.

"You didn't _make_ me do anything," Ethan replied, sullenly. "Though I guess you got your way."

"I'm not sorry about anything else," she continued. "I'm glad I said it. It's true. You're _still _doing it. You _just _did it. Nobody cares if you don't _want _to spend all day here."

A male nurse entered, with a cart, before he could respond, and Grace shot to her feet, escaping before she lost her temper entirely. "I'm going to get Shaun before he works himself up," she said.

"How's Dad?" Shaun asked as soon as he saw her, the magazine forgotten in his lap.

"Come on, you can ask him yourself."

As they entered, the nurse nodded at them, continuing to work with the IV, and Shaun held back timidly.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I've got to sleep here tonight, but I'll be better in the morning. C'mere." Ethan smiled – slightly unconvincingly, he still looked miserable – and stuck out one hand. Shaun crept forward to take it. "Sorry, Shaun. I'll miss you. You be good for your mom, okay?" Shaun nodded.

Grace felt her petty anger rising, feeling cornered once again into playing Bad Cop. "Okay, Shaun," she said. "We're going to let him get taken care of. Go wait in the hallway for a minute." She closed the door behind him, then turned back to her ex-husband.

She blurted out the important parts. "I'm going to have to go back to work soon. And Shaun needs to get back to school. You know that. But I'm not going to leave Shaun alone with you until I'm sure that you're not going to pull anything like this again. I am calling my sister to see if she can start picking him up from school, and if she says no, I'm calling my mom." Ethan looked angry but unfocused; the nurse, like he was planning an escape route. "We'll be back tonight. You can have all day to think about what you want to say about it."

Back in the car, Shaun studied the toes of his shoes. "_Is_ Dad okay?" That hateful question again.

"He should be. He didn't take his medicine, so they're just giving him some strong stuff at the hospital."

"Oh. Why not?" An even harder question.

"I guess he forgot."

"Oh." Shaun considered his feet. "I'm going to remind him."

"I think it might be better," Grace said, grimly, "If you let your dad try to remember to take it all by himself."

By the time they'd made it back home and she'd finally put lunch into Shaun, gotten herself together for the day – hair washed, makeup on – it was already early afternoon. She could vaguely remember a time when life hadn't been one unending panic, but that might have been high school. "Okay, sweets," she said in Shaun's general direction – he was, thankfully, patiently working with his Legos – "back in the car. We've got to drop by the school and get a whole bunch of work for you."

"Mooooooom." Ah, the old familiar whine.

"I know, honey. Boring stuff." Privately, Grace was grateful that life _might_ becoming more boring again. "Got to do it, though. Tell you what. If we get through all the reading part? Out for ice cream." She'd already decided he deserved the trip no matter what they accomplished, but a little bribery never hurt.

When they showed up to say goodnight, it was only seven thirty, but the curtains were drawn around the other patient in his room, and Ethan was already asleep. His color was better, though, and he was no longer visibly damp. Grace looked cautiously back at the doorway for medical personnel, then squeezed her son's shoulder. "Go ahead," she said, "Wake him up. Be careful about hugging him, his chest hurts, but you can give him a kiss." It was hard to watch Shaun go through his cautious, slightly panicky routine of waking his father, the squeeze of the hand, the rub of the face, the rising, increasingly loud inflection, but Shaun needed to see his father come back to life, and she knew it, so she let him be.

Ethan finally came awake, confused, groggy, and Grace even melted a little bit when she saw the genuine, immediate smile he gave at the sight of Shaun's face.

"Hey, Shaun," he said. "Is it late?" She stepped into the hallway to give them a few minutes alone together. The hallway was depressingly similar to all the other hallways she'd had to stand in, walk down, cry in. She fussed at her hair so she wouldn't have to stare at her watch.

Nevertheless, long practice meant her body told her when time was up, and when she walked back in, Ethan looked drowsy again, worn down by the infection. Shaun was fidgeting. "Okay," she said. "Kiss goodnight, then hallway." She looked away from Shaun's kiss, wanting to stay mad, and again shut the door after him.

"All right," she said, quietly. "So you had all day. Got anything to say?"

"I can't do better until you let me try again." The speech sounded like it had taken a lot of effort. It was less defensive, more focused, than she'd anticipated.

"What are you offering?"

He rubbed sleepily at his face. "Let me come back. I'll move out soon as I can. I'll get a babysitter to help. Someone who can sleep over. You can check references. I will. I'll do it until it's okay."

Grace didn't quite trust him, hadn't expected him to eat this much crow. He'd been so angry, so stupid, this morning. "If you do that, Ethan, we can talk. But you don't get to check out of here until everyone says you can."

"Okay." His eyes were already shut, and she wondered cynically if he'd still remember the conversation in the morning.

Shaun slept in her bed that night; it was the kind of closeness that she found both pleasantly comforting and worrying, in that it felt like a regression to when he was much, much smaller. She wanted him to need her, but also to be okay enough to not need her, anyone. Also, he always kicked like a jackrabbit in his sleep. Keeping him safe and letting him grow up was an endless tightrope, and, most of the time, she felt like she was carrying him alone across it. When she called the hospital in the morning and they said she could come pick Ethan up, Shaun's wriggle told her it was good news, but a big part of her brain wasn't so sure.

The discharge was relatively painless, at least on her end, though poor Shaun was chafing with impatience and boredom. From the staff's response, Grace could tell that Ethan had once again bitched his way into making it everyone's priority to see the back of him. He looked better, though not well, and they spoke very little as he loaded his dirty clothing and himself into the car. Back the house, he offered to help Shaun keep going on his makeup homework, and she let him, jealous of Shaun's lack of protest at doing more work.

Grace herself spent the rest of the morning in her bedroom, on the phone, calling Shaun's school again, her own job, and, after a pause, her sister. She'd made a promise, and she meant to keep it, no matter how unpleasant. Afterward, she sat in the partial darkness, making to-do lists, shopping lists, thinking, worrying, wishing her way back to the life she wished she had.

"Grace?" Ethan appeared palely in the doorway of her bedroom. "Shaun's working on his math. I think I explained it okay, but you'd better check it over when he's done. I . . . I need to lie down for a little bit."

"Oh." Startled, she reminded herself that this was what she wanted him to do – admit when he needed help before something turned into a disaster.

"Shaun and I had some lunch," he said, defensively, "And I took the pills. But it's not really sitting right."

"Okay," she said, and decided to offer him her own olive branch. "Sleep in here. Little more peace and quiet." He hesitated, then nodded, and moved to the bed. Grace left, shutting the door behind her, and headed down the stairs.

On the bed, Ethan stared at the ceiling for a long few thinks, then dug his cell phone out of his pocket and turned it on. He ignored the long strings of messages from various well-wishers and curiosity-seekers, dug out the number he was looking for, dialed. There was an answer almost before the first ring had finished.

"Hello. Ethan, is that you?"

"Yeah, Madison. I'm sorry I haven't called."

"_God_, no, that's okay. I can't even imagine what things have been like on your end. I mean, I would've liked to – oh, never mind. How is everything? How are you?"

"Fine," he said automatically, then shook his head, though he knew she couldn't see the gesture. "Listen, are you busy?"

"Incredibly," she replied. "But not too busy to talk to you." He hesitated again. "Ethan, are you still there?"

"Yeah," he said, heavily. "Listen, you can say no. It's okay if you need to. But I think I have a favor to ask you."


	3. Chapter 3

Grace dropped him off early the next day, and by the time Madison arrived at his house, Ethan had done the worst of the cleaning up. Fortunately, the police had already taken all of the materials related to the Origami Killer; he wasn't sure if he would have been up to handling those just yet. But he'd thrown away the now-spoiled food in his kitchen, run some loads of laundry, and cleared a large space for her work materials in his study, after a haphazard dusting.

She looked shy when he opened the door, helmet dangling. "I think I might have to do another run back to my place," she said. "I tried to cram everything in the backpack, but I bet I forgot something important, like my notes on Scott Shelby's place. Or clean underwear."

"Okay," he said. "I have to go out and get some groceries, anyway. It'd probably work out better if you came with, and we can stop back to get some more of your things."

He showed her in, then added, with forced casualness, "So, I think I made enough space free for you to work in my study upstairs. I put a bunch of blankets and so forth on the couch for you down here." She'd been wondering just where she was meant to spend the night; the answer wasn't thrilling, but at least she had it, now, and she'd certainly slept in rougher circumstances than that.

He was slightly overwhelmed by the items she unfolded from her pack, glad he thought he'd overestimated the amount of space she'd need to lay out her materials. He helped her access the Internet connection he vaguely remembered having set up, then stood back as she began to plaster the room in documents, electronic devices. Eventually, she nodded up at him, looking cautiously satisfied.

"I need Ann Sheppard's file," she said. "Also, toothbrush." He let some of the worry leave. They headed downstairs with her empty pack, and out into the driveway.

"You've still got your car," Madison realized. "I thought they'd taken it."

"Yeah, sort of," he smiled at her. "It was kind of a present. The FBI agent who saved our butts, he got it out of impound for me before he left town. Norman Jayden. Even got it driven back here for me, because I wasn't really up to it. Said the police owed me at least that much. God knows _he_ didn't owe me anything else, but I got the impression he was pretty mad at everything that happened. I still think that detective broke another one of my ribs when I was under arrest, but, you know, it's hard to tell what came from where."

"That sounds like the sort of thing Norman would do," she replied. "He was really nice to me about all the stuff I went through during, you know, the whole thing, but I would _not_ want to piss that guy off. He's working pretty hard on destroying some of the cops who were working on the case, including the detective who beat you up. I've been trying to interview him by phone. He is _hilariously _awkward when he's talking about himself. It's a good thing he needed to get a lot of information from me for his report, or I don't know if he'd be talking to me at all."

Their stop by her apartment, their careful negotiation through the grocery store, was in large part a reminder of how little they knew each other. He realized he had no idea where she lived, and hovered uncomfortably inside the stark splendor of her loft while she dug for her recorder and the files she'd left under an end table or on top of the fridge. She, in turn, fussed over the fact that he knew exactly what he needed to get to feed himself and Shaun for a week – but had no idea how to organize a shopping list, and couldn't remember if he had any of what she needed to keep herself going. Tea, granola, and tuna fish were very important blanks in his database. It was a game for a while, Madison constantly running three aisles back to grab something that he'd just discovered they could have picked up five minutes ago. At least he knew he was out of everything fresh; they threw citrus into the cart like they were trying to bludgeon scurvy to death.

They made it back to his house, unloaded the car. Ethan sat down heavily at the kitchen table, coat still on, while she worked at the Tetris puzzle of getting the frozen goods into place in the freezer.

"You all right?" she said, wrestling with a bag of corn.

"Yeah," he said, then, "No. Busy day. I really just wore myself out with all that. I'm having some trouble staying awake. I'm going to go upstairs and take a nap. Wake me up when Shaun gets here, okay?" After he creaked upstairs, she curiously explored the house, decided she could keep her nose out of the unpacked boxes and unwrapped pictures for the time being, and settled back down to work on the paragraph she'd been in the middle of, stumped, when she'd hustled her way out of her apartment that morning. After making no progress, she brewed tea and started again.

Madison was startled, even momentarily panicked, when, much later, she heard the front door open. "Dad?" she heard, floating up from downstairs. She rolled her eyes at herself; of course Ethan's son was used to simply walking into his father's house. She hesitated over her laptop, then opened the office door and headed down the stairs. Shaun was standing at the foot of them, looking slightly lost.

"Hi," she smiled down at him, awkwardly. "Remember me?"

He nodded, shyly. "Mom said you'd be here. Where's my dad?"

"He's asleep," she said, and his face fell.

"Is he okay?"

"Yeah," she rushed to say, confused. "He's good. He just needed a nap. Oh, shoot, I forgot he said I should wake him up. Why don't you go do it?"

He dropped his backpack inside the front door and scurried up the stairs past her. She watched him go, then continued down the stairs to close the door against the chilly air. There was a woman standing on the front porch. They both jumped slightly at the sight of each other.

"Oh," said Madison. "Grace. I'm sorry, I didn't know you were out there. Come on in, I guess. Sorry, that feels weird to say. It's not like this is my place. I've never even been inside before today."

Grace smiled awkwardly. "I understand," she said, stepping just inside the doorway, and held up a brown shopping bag. "Ethan left some things behind."

They hadn't seen each other since Ethan had left the hospital the first time; each had been slightly hysterical when they'd first met, Grace effusive with gratitude, Madison still having trouble believing she wasn't dead, and they'd cried a little, together. Afterward, when they'd repeatedly run into each other visiting an increasingly impatient Ethan Mars, their initial emotions seemed embarrassing, excessive, and their conversations had become stilted.

"Listen," Grace said softly, handing over the paper bag. "I made a big mistake, two years ago. I told Shaun that Ethan was asleep, that he was just sleeping, when he was in a coma. Then he slept for _six months_, and he almost didn't come out of it at all. Shaun's smart enough to understand the difference, we've talked about it, he knows that's not going to happen again. Probably not. But it still scares him, when Ethan goes to sleep in the middle of the day. When it's hard to wake him up. Just . . . be aware."

Madison had covered her mouth with her hand while the other woman was speaking, her eyes widening. "Oh, my god," she said. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't think. I _knew_ about that, but I didn't realize."

Grace relaxed slightly. "It's okay. It's sort of a weird thing to get used to. Kids are funny. Our son, Jason, he used to be afraid of wind when he was little. Was afraid it was going to blow the whole house away. I think we let him watch _Wizard of Oz _when he was too young for it. You're staying overnight?"

"Um, yeah." The increasingly-uncomfortable Madison had been hoping for a change of subject, but the new one was similarly off-putting. "Ethan said he needed an extra pair of hands for a little bit. My job's pretty flexible, so I sort of moved into his study."

Grace nodded thoughtfully. "Okay. I should be back around four tomorrow. Shaun!" She called up the stairs. "I'm going now, okay?"

"Okay, Mom!" floated back down. He must have roused his father successfully; there was no edge of panic in his voice.

She hesitated on the threshold with obvious reluctance. "You call if you need anything!"

"O_kay_, Mom!"

Grace looked back at Madison and gave a sad little shrug. "Kids." Madison flashed back an uncomfortable smile, and closed the door behind the other woman as she left, then let out the breath she hadn't known she was holding.

Outside, Grace composed herself behind the wheel of her car. A lot of things didn't seem fair at the moment: having Shaun dismiss her departure so casually, for one. Feeling old when she talked to Madison was another; she wasn't even that much older, but the feeling had made her talk too much, get in that unintended little dig about the past she shared with Ethan that Madison didn't. _And_ she felt like she'd come uneasily close to breaking her new rule for Ethan: leaving Shaun alone with him and a near-total stranger didn't seem much better than trusting just him. But there was a strange sort of sense in it: this woman she barely knew had managed, once before, to help Ethan keep her son safe, and so she'd agreed when he told her what he'd planned. Grace owed him, owed Madison, at least that much.

She started the car, thinking that Ethan, if anything, was the one who deserved to feel old with that slim, quick girl around. She wondered, briefly, what else he might be feeling about Madison, and told herself almost immediately afterward to grow up.

The evening at Ethan's house was relatively unremarkable; Madison went back to work until she heard movement in the kitchen downstairs, and emerged to find Shaun setting the table, Ethan pulling things out of cupboards.

"Hey, guys," she said. "Everything okay?" Shaun bit his lip, still shy.

"I hope you like spaghetti," Ethan said, working to fill a pot at the kitchen faucet. "It's tonight's nomination for fine cuisine. Shaun takes his with ketchup, but that's optional. Take a seat, you can watch masters at work."

"Ketchup? Oh, _ew_," she responded, and slid into a chair, anyway. "I'd offer to help, but I don't actually know how to make any amount of food between serving one and seven."

"Why seven?" Shaun ventured.

"_Big_ family, kiddo," she smiled at him.

"She's lying," Ethan said. "She used to have to make dinner for herself, and then those seven dwarves." Shaun giggled, Madison grinned.

She stayed contentedly in place as the Mars boys worked their way through dinner preparations, deciding that they made a cute couple. She was sure both were self-conscious, performing for her benefit, but it was still pretty goddamned adorable. She let Ethan tease her gently, because Shaun so obviously loved the conspiracy of laughter the two of them joined in against her. Under Ethan's supervision, Shaun asked her what she wanted to drink, clumsily fetched it, managed napkins, salt and pepper, a last-minute run to the pantry for some canned mushrooms once it was determined that both she and Ethan could stomach them in the sauce that _wasn't _ketchup.

It was a kind of detailed domesticity she was unused to, and after the meal was over, she offered to reciprocate by washing the dishes. Ethan hesitated.

"Come on," Madison said. "Look, you still have to put all the leftovers in something first, because I don't know where that stuff is. And then, afterwards, you still get to put all the clean dishes away, because I have no idea where everything goes."

"Okay," he said. "Shaun, you can hit the TV if you want. Just cartoons. I'll be out in a minute." Madison and Ethan worked together in the kitchen for a bit.

"Just cartoons?" Madison asked, hesitantly.

"Grace thought it was better if he didn't watch the news," Ethan replied, frowning at the short end of a roll of aluminum foil. "I think she's probably right. I don't even know what I'd do, looking at . . . his face, again right now." He just managed to squeeze what was left around the heel end of the garlic bread.

She'd been looking at Shelby's face all week, at a _lot_ of faces that she suddenly realized she should probably not mention, and she stole a sideways look at Ethan. He was staring very hard at the refrigerator.

"That," Madison said, wrestling with the dish rack, "is a major appliance. Good job finding it."

"Yeah, sorry," he said. He was smiling a little, but still looked lost. "I'm trying to think if I've forgotten anything before Shaun has to go to bed. Pills. I have to take some antibiotics and other stuff. With food. We just ate, so that should be okay. Maybe the tomato sauce was too much. Maybe I should drink some milk. _He's_ all right, though, he's done with the directions they gave us to take home."

"Okay," she said, lightly, slightly alarmed at the level of overdrive Ethan sounded like he was working his way towards. "Go take your pills, then go punch Shaun in the arm or whatever guys do to bond. You earned it." He nodded, left the room.

The spaghetti sauce – which only Madison and Ethan had eaten – had crusted its way up around the sides of the pan, and she had to let it soak for a while, several whiles, grumbling and trying to figure out how to put things away, before she could get it entirely clean. When she worked her way back into the living room, she was not entirely surprised to find that she was the only one conscious, despite the still-early hour. Their faces were blue in the light from the program still running, the son lying partially on his father's body, and they both looked improbably uncomfortable. Shaun was almost upside-down, one stockinged foot up on the back of the sofa, the other hooked in his father's elbow. Ethan's head dangled over the arm of the furniture, and he had one foot fully on the ground himself.

Madison covered her mouth with her hand. She couldn't help the laugh. "Dipshits," she said, softly, and tiptoed upstairs to fetch her camera. She limited herself to three snaps before, remembering her conversation with Grace, she tweaked Ethan's ear to get him up first.

"Hey," she whispered, as he flinched. "Hey, come on, you fell asleep. Go to bed." He nodded, looking slightly alarmed, and worked his way upright. Shaun didn't move. Ethan mouthed a silent "thanks" in Madison's direction, scooped his son up, grunting, and began moving upstairs. Shaun only wriggled slightly.

Madison turned the television off, then hit the rest of the lights on the ground floor. She worked her way up the stairs after they'd settled themselves, and went back into the study to keep writing. It was hours later when she decided she had to go to sleep – she always judged by her watch, not her body, because her body never wanted to, and she threw the blankets every which way on the downstairs sofa that still smelled slightly of that indefinable boy smell - somewhere between Old Spice and old sweat.

She paid for sleeping on it. It was a bad one, the nightmare. They weren't just after her, they weren't just trying to kill her - she was always going to die, and she knew it - they were trying to _hurt_ her, in the places that made her go blind with panic. The places where, beyond all, knives couldn't be put, pressed, tearing, before she lost her mind. She was sobbing by the time she woke up, even though, in the dreams, the pain never actually woke her. It was always the awful anticipation.

She retired to the kitchen to shiver, to listen to the awful noises of the unfamiliar house around her, to drink tea, to turn on all the lights around her. If Ethan wanted her there, he could pay her at least the added electric bill, in tolls. Frankly, the entire setup was a deal she was thinking about radically renegotiating.


	4. Chapter 4

She managed to doze a little bit again before dawn began to fill the place with grey, but it wasn't a good night. She was already working again by the time she heard Ethan, then Shaun, make their way downstairs. Ethan hollered at her for breakfast, and she agreed with Shaun that waffles were pretty much awesome, glad they'd bought all the fruit the day before. Afterward, with father and son bickering over the homework problem, Shaun beginning to sulk, she retreated to the study for a few hours more. It wasn't working, all of the information about the Origami Killer. It was only limping along, being supremely uncooperative. It was such a great story, and there was no reason it should read like it was boring, but it _was_ reading that way. She glared at her screen, trying to force the text into shape, until there was a knock on the cracked-open study door.

"Madison, I'm sorry, I hate to ask you," Ethan started, leaning on the door frame.

"Oh, just ask. I hate my job more than life right now. I am too stupid to use language." She shifted her glare from the screen to him; he looked uncomfortable. Actually, she realized, he looked kind of bad.

"I don't think I got enough sleep. I'm feeling a little shaky. Could you –"

"Yeah, sure," she replied, before he could finish. "I am more than ready for a break. Did I see a basketball hoop out back?"

"You did," he responded, surprised. "The ball should be out there, too. I think it's gotten kind of cold, though."

"Well, we can try it, anyway." Ethan forced a coat and a thin pair of gloves onto a protesting Shaun before disappearing into his bedroom. Both woman and boy jammed hands in their pockets and made their way outside, and began fumbling through the world's worst game of H-O-R-S-E, on the world's worst overgrown court. Madison struggled to remember the rules. It hardly mattered; after they'd both worked their way up to H-O-, they'd started laughing at how mutually terrible they were. Neither one won before Madison realized the weather _had_ gotten colder, cold enough that the only jacket she'd brought was no longer enough.

"Shaun, I think we have to go in. I am _freezing_." She stuck her hands in her armpits.

"Okay." He looked a little disappointed, but the tip of his nose was pink, and she thought he'd probably better get inside, too.

He shed his cold-weather gear in the laundry room like a particularly untidy reptile losing its skin, while she jumped up and down in the kitchen, warming her hands under the sink's hot water so she could use them properly again.

"Take a seat, kiddo," she said. "Tell me everything you know."

"About what?" he said, climbing on to a chair.

"I don't know," she replied, drying her hands, unzipping her jacket. "Pick something. You can ask _me_ something, if you want."

"Can you take me for a ride on your motorcycle?"

"No way," she said immediately, refilling the teakettle. "I only brought one helmet. Anyway, your mom would flip her shit." When she turned back from the sink with the full kettle, Shaun was staring at her with unbelieving horror. She realized what she'd just said, and went into panic mode. "Oh, _shit_. I mean, oh, hell. I mean, oh, oh, oh, Shaun, I'm sorry. Bad word. Two of them. Three of them. I'm sorry, I swear too much. Bad habit. Don't tell on me. No, wait, you should tell on me. No secrets. Oh, man, I screwed up."

He giggled, his face breaking into the wide-eyed grin of the guiltily fascinated.

"Is that another bad word?" she kept worrying at it while she got the kettle on the stove. "Can I say screwed? Or should I say I messed up?"

"You effed up," Shaun said, looking self-consciously wicked.

"Yes, sir, I did. I do that, sometimes." She sat down herself, showing all her teeth in her widest grin, and both shot their gazes to the ceiling as they heard movement overhead. "Sounds like your dad's up."

"Is he all right?" Shaun asked, serious again.

"No," she said with mock gravity. "I'm pretty sure he's a werewolf. We are going to have to tie him to a chair for the full moon."

He squinted. "Why for the full moon?" The joke had gone over his head. Madison rolled her eyes, was still explaining the concept of werewolves – in what she hoped were relatively innocuous terms – when Ethan appeared, rumpled, in the kitchen doorway. They paused to look up at him.

"Hey, guys," he said. "Did you have a good time? Want some lunch?"

"Madison is really bad at basketball," Shaun announced cheerfully, nodding. "And she swears too much." Ethan's eyes flickered towards her questioningly.

"I said I was sorry!" She gave an apologetic grimace, and Ethan shook his head at her, smiling.

"You're forgiven. Go wash up, Shaun. Peanut butter sandwich?"

"_And_ honey and raisins," his son replied, thumping towards the bathroom. Madison shuddered and stuck out her tongue at the ingredients.

"Thanks for that," Ethan said, and began to pull out plates. "The basketball. I don't really feel up to stuff like that just yet."

"He's right, you know, I am terrible at basketball. I could probably kick his butt at soccer, though. Your butt, too. And field hockey." She dropped her voice. "And I accidentally said 'shit,' twice."

"He goes to public school. He'll get over it. Do you want a sandwich, or leftovers?"

The rest of lunch was slow, pleasurable. Werewolves were discussed, then vampires. Ethan very seriously explained that The Count from Sesame Street feasted on the stuffing of other Muppets, and Madison, startled into laughter, dropped leftover spaghetti in her lap. Zombies were on the horizon by the time Madison excused herself back to the study. She managed to rearrange a few choice chunks of text as the afternoon grew fat.

Madison was on another downstairs tea run when she saw the car pull into the driveway. Feeling guilty about stranding Grace on the porch last time, she made it to the front door and opened it when the other woman was still on the steps.

"Where's Shaun?" Grace asked, immediately. "And Ethan?"

"Upstairs, messing around in Shaun's room," she replied. "I think they're drawing."

Grace looked at her, steadily. "Let's talk," she said, abruptly.

". . . okay."

Grace determinedly clutched her purse and moved in to the kitchen, sitting down at the table. Madison followed, slightly confused, hoping she wasn't about to get called out on sleeping with another woman's ex-husband. She hardly even deserved it, at this point.

"How's he been?" Grace asked. "Ethan."

"Okay, I guess," she replied. The question was confusing, unexpected. "He's pretty tired. Hasn't he been staying with you? I mean, you'd know better than me."

"Tell me everything that's happened since I dropped Shaun off. Everything."

Madison hesitated, but Grace's steely gaze was compelling. So she thought back, and slowly covered it all: homework, dinner, father and son falling asleep on the sofa, breakfast, basketball, lunch.

At the end, Grace's eyes were slightly narrowed. "He slept all morning? Ethan?"

"Well, not _all_ morning." Madison felt as though she were failing a test, but wasn't sure what the rules were that would let her pass. "He made breakfast, and I think they did some more homework together while I got some of my writing done. Then he said he felt tired and was it okay if I kept an eye on Shaun, and so the two of us shot hoops until I realized I was freezing my ass off. Just me, by the way, he had a way better coat on than I did. Ethan was back up again for lunch." Grace quirked an eyebrow at the "ass," but didn't comment.

"Did he take all of his medication?" she asked, instead.

"God, I don't know. He talked about taking some pills, I guess."

Grace nodded, slowly. "All right."

"I, uh." Madison paused, awkwardly. "I slept on the couch. Last night."

Grace scratched thoughtfully at a spot on the table. "I don't think I really care," she said, finally, "Where you slept. As long as it doesn't mean that Shaun was having to fend for himself, or in danger, or scared."

There didn't seem to be a response to that. Madison was slightly resentful that Grace seemed to think she had the authority to grant permission for their sleeping arrangements – and, simultaneously, was grateful that the permission had been granted, anyway.

Grace filled the silence: "Do you work with kids a lot?"

Madison squirmed; it was beginning to feel like a job interview. "Not really. But I had about ten thousand brothers, growing up. I'm going to go tell Shaun you're here." She fled upstairs; Grace let her go.

Madison cracked the door to Shaun's bedroom, stuck her head in. "Shaun, your mom's here to pick you up." He grabbed some paper and rocketed out of the room past her legs. Ethan was sitting on the floor next to his son's desk, looking up, slightly slow on the uptake. Madison gave him the look of death before she turned to follow the boy down the stairs. She entered the kitchen just before Ethan did, both hovering on the periphery of Grace's tickle torture of her son.

Shaun, giggling, danced behind a chair for cover. "Dad made me an awesome Batman." He thrust it at her, and Grace smiled. She knew figure drawing had never been Ethan's strong suit – his old sketches of her that she still had squirreled away proved that – but it was good enough, she had to agree, to draw a pretty awesome Batman.

"Did you make any pictures?" she asked. "Stick them in your bag, and you can show them to me when we get home." He pounded back up the stairs, and she stood, smiling.

When she spoke again, it was clearly directed at her ex-husband. "Here's the plan. I'm going to see how much more work Shaun can get through over the weekend, and then I'll take him back to school on Monday. I'll pick him up, too, and bring him back here, just to make sure . . . everything's okay. I'm going to try to go back to work Tuesday, but we can talk about that in a couple of days."

"All right," Ethan said. "Thanks, Grace." Madison felt like the elephant in the room. A stupid, alien, excluded elephant. Shaun pounded back down the stairs, backpack loaded. Shaun, Ethan, and Grace moved to the front door, while Madison hung back, seating herself at the kitchen table while the former Mars family worked through its parting ritual. Finally, the front door shut. She kept silent until Ethan had come back to her, sat down at the table. He was already hanging his head.

"Okay, it would have been really good to know that my real job was apparently spying on you, asshole," Madison started. "We just had a conversation in the kitchen where I thought she was going to start shining bright lights in my face and ask me if I knew what my thought crimes were."

He grimaced. "Did she give you the third degree? I'm sorry, I didn't know she was going to do that."

"What the hell is going on?"

"I told you I needed a little help looking after Shaun right now," he said. "That's true. It's also true that Grace knows I need it, and she's decided that I have to have it, or he's not coming here."

"You didn't tell her that we, uh." There didn't seem a good way to say _had sex while your son was missing._

"No," he said. "It didn't seem . . ."

"Smart?"

"I was going to say, 'necessary.'"

"How long is this supposed to last?"

He shrugged, uncomfortably. "I'm not sure. I think she'll trust me sooner rather than later."

"Were you going to _tell_ me this was an indefinite favor?"

"I thought maybe we could get through one night, first. I'm hoping this helped change her mind. There's a couple of days until Monday. I can find someone else to ask. You were great, perfect, really, but it's not fair to trap you here. And you don't owe me anything, I owe you about a thousand things. I just . . . the time with him."

He looked at her pleadingly, and she glared back at him. He was right, Madison thought, but he was also so sadly apologetic. "Well, one thing's for damn sure, I'm not covering for your ass. You screw up, I am going to snitch, and then I'm leaving, and you two can figure out a new passive-aggressive way to fight that doesn't involve me."

He nodded, looking relieved. "Do you want me to help you get your stuff back home?"

"No," she said, "I want to get some damn _work_ done, and hauling everything back and forth is _not_ going to help. You can make me some tea, and then you can leave me the hell alone for a while, and _then_," she was starting to smile, despite herself, "If you get all _that_ right, you can make me dinner. Again. No ketchup."

He was smiling back at her. "Thank you, Madison."

Dinner was simple, sleepy, and while they ate, Ethan slowly, reluctantly, filled her in on all the details of how he'd earned his place in the doghouse.

"Wow," Madison said, chewing. "When we met during that whole thing, I sort of thought that you didn't want to go to the hospital because there was so much danger of getting arrested. I didn't realize that you're also a moron."

He flinched, but took it. "I'm working on it. Figuring out how to admit there's stuff I can't control. Figuring out when I have to slow down. It just doesn't seem important, most of the time, but I guess I'm hearing that it is, from a lot of people."

They did the dishes together, and then there was an awkward fumble of forward movement. "Do you want to go back to the study?" Ethan asked.

"No, I need another break." She meditated. "Entertain me."

"There's some movies. Most of them are Shaun's, but I've got a couple of grown-up things, too."

"Good enough." They flipped through the titles until they both found one they could tolerate, and settled down to watch _North by Northwest_. He told her, softly, about the architecture in the film. What it looked like, what it meant, where it came from, that amazing cliffside house of Frank Lloyd Wright fantasy. She leant against him, told him to stop talking when James Mason was, because that voice was too good to miss.

The movie ended; they were bathed in snow from the screen. She started talking, because she knew he wouldn't.

"Listen," she said. "You owe me. You owe me, big time. My price for performance is one warm bed."

He squeezed her arm, but answered reluctantly. "I don't feel –"

"Did I say I want to bang you? I said I want to be in your bed. There's a difference. I'm exhausted, and I want to sleep in your bed. With you in it. Say yes, or I'm gone."

"Yes." There weren't a lot of words after that, and they both made their way upstairs, into the world of old tee-shirts and boxer shorts, for sleep. They curled away from each other, falling into private comforts.

This time, someone broke through the apartment window to Madison's back, knife in hand. She knew he was there, could feel him, could even _see_ him, in a bird's-eye view, stabbing down towards her reclining body, but everything was happening in slow-motion, her body felt like she was moving through mud, through quicksand, and she was never going to get away in time. Helpless, terrified, she braced her body against the pain that she knew was going to tear her apart.

"Madison." It wasn't a knife against her throat, but a warm hand, and she came awake with a shudder, no longer in her apartment. She blinked, still panicking, into Ethan's sleepy face. Her heart was beating like a hummingbird's.

"Hey," he mumbled. "Wake up. Bad dream." She pulled her arms protectively into her chest, and pressed herself against him, trembling. He clumsily wrapped one arm around her back, squeezing her for a second, tucked the top of her head under his chin – and went back to sleep. And just like that, the moment of terror was over for her. She wanted to laugh into his chest at how easy it'd been. No heroics. He'd barely even woken up, and somehow that made it better, his absolute assumption that everything was okay, because he'd woken her up and told her so. She didn't have to think about it long before she'd joined him again in sleep.

* * *

**A/N**: FUCK James Mason is awesome.


	5. Chapter 5

Ethan woke first the next morning, and spent a few confused seconds worried that he was sick again, back in the hospital. He was too warm, damp with sweat, and there was an ache in his chest. Blinking his way into full consciousness, he put the pieces together: one of Madison Paige's elbows was pressing awkwardly into his still-sore burn, and their shared body heat had made the top blanket excessive. It was no more than that. He wriggled gingerly free, wincing, and she woke in response as he sat up, his shirt sticking to him.

"Thanks for last night," she said, and smiled at the puzzled look on his face. "Sorry, I mean thanks for when I had the nightmare. Sometimes they're really bad."

He struggled to remember. "Oh, right. You kicked me. You're welcome." He paused. "I have them, too, sometimes."

She ran her hand through her hair, nodding, thinking she had a pretty good idea of the kinds of things that waited for him at night.

"Is that why you wanted to sleep in here?"

Her mouth serious, she nodded again.

"Did it help?"

She smiled again. "Yeah."

"I'm glad. Wish _I'd_ thought of that. Breakfast?"

"I didn't demand that granola because I like the way it looks."

After they'd eaten, they took turns showering, and she helped him put fresh bandages on the parts of his body that still looked angry. The old cuts on his wrists and knees were quickly becoming pinkish scars, but his stubby finger still needed care. The sunburst of red infection on his chest had faded to pink; both of them still winced as she rewrapped it.

"I have to go," she said, as she finished. "I'm going to leave most of my stuff here, but I need to go talk to someone. A few people, if I can find them. I'll be back . . . probably tomorrow. Sunday night. Shaun's not coming back until Monday, right?"

"Right. Probably around three. Thanks." He scratched at his stubble, picked up the shaving cream. "I'll call you if Grace changes her mind. Do you need me to get anything?"

"No," she said. "I'm good." She slung her laptop and camera into the backpack, left her files, snagged her helmet, hit the front door running.

The day was wearying. She was lost on the endless paper chase of figuring out just who could give her the legal authority to use conversations with Ann Sheppard in her writing. The home hadn't known she'd had any living relatives before Scott Shelby was revealed in death, and their records were now in impossible knots. It was a long, frustrating day, though she thought she had a glimmer of an answer by the time she'd worked her way back to her apartment. She shook her head at the sight of it: it was in such disarray that it looked like homeless people were squatting in it. Dinner was one of the sad little numbers out of the freezer, and she kicked all obstructions off of her bed before piling on every blanket she owned to shut out the chill. It was cold, but she didn't want to turn up the thermostat for a place she was leaving tomorrow.

There were three of them, that night. One of them rubbed a gun thoughtfully along her temple while he toyed with her underwear. She promised them anything, everything, and they laughed at her. She screamed herself awake as they began to grab at her wrists and ankles. It was still dark. Panting, she wondered how long it would take for Shelby to show up in her dreams. She knew she wasn't going to be able to sleep again tonight, slipped on a sports bra, some sweats, went for a run until the rest of the world was awake. The fuckers in her head would never catch her if she was running.

Ethan wasn't quite prepared for the thunderstorm of Madison that hit his front door that Sunday afternoon. Her backpack was full again; she didn't bother to ring the bell, but stomped in.

"Make me food, woman," she said. He'd been interrupted in the middle of trying to scrub the sad stains of rot in his fridge, couldn't quite parse the sentence. She panted at him.

"I'm sorry?" he said.

"Have you eaten?" she continued, more levelly, as she stripped off her thick coat. "I haven't. I had like a cup of coffee for breakfast and I am _starving_. I will probably eat you if you do not give me food."

"You've still got some granola here," he said, cautiously. "And yogurt. And there's fruit. That's quick to put together."

"That sounds great," she said, slamming her way up the stairs, backpack in hand.

After eating, she shut herself tight back into the study, writing her way down from the panicked high she'd been riding. Ethan waited until late to knock timidly on her door, offered real food, and she emerged smiling, calmer. The lines across his forehead disappeared as she hugged him sideways.

"Sorry," she said. "Ugh, not a great day, yesterday." They warmed towards each other again over stir-fry, and, by the clock and Ethan's drooping eyelids, it was already time for sleep again when they were done.

"Listen," Madison said. "I'd like to interview you. I _need_ to interview you. Don't freak out, I don't want to be super formal about it. Can we talk? Just talk?"

"I think I need some sleep," he said, doubtfully.

"That's okay. Go get in bed. Nobody needs to know where this happened. Take your pills."

He was curled up in bed, looking uneasy, when she walked in wearing her own tattered pyjama bottoms. She thrust herself under the covers across from him, turned the recorder on, placed it between them like an interpreter.

"I don't know if I want to do this," Ethan said. "I'm not sure what I'll say to you, and what it would be okay to say to everyone else."

"Don't you think I'll show you, you dummy?" Madison asked. "I won't print anything you don't say is okay. But I want to hear all of it, anyway."

He nodded, doubtfully. "Where do you want me to start?" he asked.

"You had five origami figures, right? Tell me about the first one."

"The bear." He hadn't realized he needed to talk about it, needed to say more than the bare-bones outline he'd given the police, but he did. He told her about the long, long measure of doubt, about the terror of knowing what he was doing, knowing it was wrong, potentially deadly for multiple people, doing it anyway. The telling stretched out and out. What it was like to be in zero gravity, the moment of pain on impact. Not understanding how hurt he was until he'd staggered a fair distance away and the adrenaline had worn off. About meeting her, needing her, needing to keep going, needing Shaun. He trailed off.

She let the tape whirr between them, and then she talked, gave her version. "You just looked so bad when I saw you," she said. "I couldn't leave you there. You were hardly standing up." She told him about how much pain she'd seen, how worried she was, how curious. The gouge in his face, his inability to walk by himself, his huddled, busy pain. They were both trembling a little by the time she'd reached his dismissal of her from the hotel room. The tape hissed on a little while they shifted in the silent dark, finally clicked off. She pulled the recorder to her chest, then put it on the nightstand behind her. It was filled with so much of their shared pain, it felt like a hideous, mechanical child.

"I need to go to sleep now," Ethan said. Madison could hardly see his face in the dark, but she knew it was true.

"Me, too," she said. They shivered mutually for a while, not because they were cold, and dropped slowly into dreams. He pulled her towards himself again when her inevitable night terrors came, and she used his warm body to briefly cry her way back into sleep.

A cautious Grace dropped Shaun off the next afternoon, Monday, leaving more work for him to complete. She said little to the adults once she saw they were both there, spoke to her son seriously for a few minutes, kissed his squirming face goodbye.

Shaun himself was in a state of cautious excitement; his teacher had taken him aside and told him to come to her if any of his classmates made him uncomfortable, asking questions. So far, he'd loved answering them all, but Ethan could tell that he knew there might be darker ones down the road. They let him chatter as long as he liked before dinner, then Ethan twisted Shaun's arm into looking at his schoolwork, Madison retreating back to the beast of writing that was building on her laptop upstairs.

Grace let her son stay the week. Their lives began a slow ritual. Shaun filled them during the mornings, afternoons, and evenings; at night, they talked. They were innocent and demanding as children, in bed, both knowing that what they were doing could barely be called an interview at all. They worked their way trial by trial, each night: after the car Ethan had destroyed, it was the electrical fields that had nearly eaten him, the stubby finger that even now curled against his chest. Madison matched him story for story, surprising him with how much she'd always known, how much she'd supervised his progress. And always, when the recorder was full of its fat, poisonous words, and they'd drifted off and she'd run into her hideous aggressors, he had to hold her for that one brief minute – sometimes two, if it was a bad night – when she was hysterical, terrified.

On the third night, Ethan had his first nightmare, his surprisingly high whimper startling Madison out of sleep. She stared uncomprehendingly at his jerking back for a moment before reaching around him, groping for his hand. He was disquietingly hard to wake from his private terror.

"Ethan," she said, squeezing his left hand in her own, "Come on. Nightmare." He finally worked himself awake after she kneed him, hard, in the back of the leg. He shook for a second, nodded gratefully, hugged her arm, and fell back into the abrupt sleep that seemed to be his peculiar gift. Later that night, he still had the energy to briefly grasp her again when she ended up in her own dark places.

The week went on; their lives revolved around Shaun and the words that poured into the hissing tape recorder. Shaun appeared to be coping with what he was getting at school; Ethan insisted, for Grace's peace of mind, that Madison come with when he took Shaun to his counselor. They fidgeted together in the clinical space of the waiting room, infinitely less comfortable than when in the nest they'd made themselves.

Ethan himself managed his way back to work one morning while she wrote; he'd been the office ghost for so long that, he told Madison later, the receptionist actually shrieked a little when she saw him. He'd always been a contractor, not salaried, and the only partner present – Eric – was able to shuffle a few small files his way.

"We had to reassign your old jobs," Eric said, gently. "If you need a little help building up your client base again –"

"No," Ethan responded, embarrassed. "Of course. I mean, thanks. I'm glad everything got taken care of. I'm sorry I've been such a mess." They didn't know how to talk to each other any more than that.

"How's your son?" Eric asked, awkwardly.

"He's okay," Ethan said, glad at the chance to talk about something else, something that was always already taking up a lot of his thinking. "I mean, he's not _okay_, but he's really bouncing back pretty good. Kids are kind of amazing that way, I guess. Lots of ways, really. Look, let me get this stuff back to you, and then maybe we can talk about me getting a little hand up on new clients." They parted, much relieved.

The week continued, the days of making sure Shaun's life was working, the nights filling the tapes. Madison heard in better detail about the man Ethan hadn't been able to kill, and they skimmed gently together over the desperate clenching of bodies that they'd shared after that terrible moment.

The last night of retelling the trials, Thursday night, was particularly hard. "The rat," he started, and thought for a long, long while. The tape spun on. The story he told when he'd started again was new to Madison; she thought, disconnectedly, that she'd never interviewed a suicide before. It was strange, listening to someone who thought he'd killed himself, once upon a time, who couldn't believe he was still alive, thought this might all be some sort of death-dream. She could feel, stretching bakc to his first son's death, his grinding, guilty need for self-destruction. The story itself was short, but when he was finished, she didn't have an answering narrative for him, was too tired, too unsettled, to give back. She hadn't been there with him, didn't know anything about it. Instead, she reached for him across the bed, wrapped him up, tried to cover him from the world. The recorder pressed, hard, into their ribcages; neither noticed, cared. Its tape slowly ran out.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** I asked a few people to take a look at this before I posted it, then I was so mad at how crappy it was that I banged away at it by myself until I liked it better. So that's why I didn't send it to you. I've gone back and tweaked the first five parts; I think the whole thing sort of fits together now. Schmaybe.

* * *

Madison came half-awake when Ethan got up the next morning, Friday, then snuggled lazily back into the pillows, deciding she didn't want to face the hideous whirlpool of her desperate notes in the study just yet. She was fully asleep again when she heard the crash from downstairs, then another, Shaun's shriek, and it startled her rigid. Frightened, her adrenaline already up, she nearly whipped herself prone to the floor as she wrestled her way out of the sheets. By the time she realized she was standing up, she was already wrenching open the bedroom door.

As soon as she hit the head of the stairs, she knew she was going too fast, tried to compensate so she wouldn't pitch down headfirst. It almost worked – she made it nearly to the bottom before her heel slid forward off an edge, and she crashed down the last three steps, her tailbone rattling along them. Madison took a second to react to her hard, painful landing, then used the banister to haul herself to her feet and whirl towards the kitchen. She was still leaning on it when she made eye contact.

Father and son were both around the table, staring at her, open-mouthed. Shaun was twisted half around in his chair, eyes wide. Ethan was standing, frozen, his expression a mirror of his son's.

"Are you all right?" Ethan asked. He started towards her and grabbed on to the refrigerator as he slipped slightly. Madison flicked her eyes downward, took in the mess on the floor – a wide spray of cereal and milk, an overturned bowl. "Did you fall down the stairs?"

"I'm okay," she said, automatically, trying to cool down from panic mode, readjusting her grip on the banister. "I just . . . I thought I heard . . ."

"Oh," Ethan said, and moved carefully into the door frame. He held his right hand up towards her, palm out, and she stared blankly at the red plastic circle in his palm. "It turns out that yo-yos," he said, cautiously, "Are an outside toy. Also I don't remember how to do an around the world any more. You sure you're okay? It sounded like you hit pretty hard."

She stared at the yo-yo for another second, then met Shaun's eyes. He hadn't moved. Still off-balance, she let herself slide down to the floor on her bruised-feeling rump, trying to think of a response that wouldn't include the words "asshole" or "douchebag."

"You _creep_," she said, and began to laugh at herself. "I thought World War Three was breaking out down here."

Shaun smiled. "We _scared_ you," he said, with mildly sadistic glee.

"Yeah, you did. You guys are rotten." She rubbed at her tailbone.

Ethan came over to her and reached down to give her a hand. "Want some breakfast?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, grabbing his wrists to pull herself up. "But you owe me something way better than cereal."

"I'll see what I can do." They headed towards the kitchen, and there was a honk from outside.

"Oh, _no_," Ethan groaned, looking at the clock. Shaun hopped down from his chair. "Your mom's here already. Don't step in the – oh, crap." His son sported a wet streak down one pant leg, and was now peering at it curiously. "Okay, no time to change. I don't think you have any clean pants, anyway. Just grab your coat and your bag."

Madison backed out of the way as Shaun scrambled into action, dodging the mess on the floor, hopping awkwardly into preparedness – shoes, coat, backpack. He started to open the front door.

"Oh, hold on," Ethan added, and joined him, working the yo-yo string off his own finger. "Don't forget this." As Shaun accepted it, Ethan knelt down and squeezed him in a hard hug.

"_Daaad_." Shaun squirmed away, protesting. "Come _on_." Madison wasn't sure if he was embarrassed by the display of affection in front of her, or just in general.

"I love you, anyway." Ethan said, releasing him. "See you Monday."

He closed the door after his son and slumped a little against it. Madison cleared her throat.

"The one day Grace is going to pick him up and take him home," Ethan moaned, "And I send him off to school with milk down his pants. He's going to _stink_ by the end of the day."

Madison shrugged. "Accidents happen. The state of being a boy is perpetual filth, anyway."

He sighed and turned back to her. "Yeah, I guess so."

"You were supposed to be offended by that. I'm just going to make my own breakfast, I think. You've got enough to deal with." She nodded her head meaningfully at the floor.

Madison crunched her way through toast and tea as Ethan got the mess of upturned cereal off the floor. "What are you doing today?" he asked.

"More of the same," she said, mouth full. "Haven't really made a lot of specific plans. I tend not to. Why?"

"Well," he peered at her over the top of the table, still on his knees. "I was wondering if you'd like to go out with me sometime." He sounded nervous.

Her chewing slowed, and she stared at him. "What, seriously?"

"Yes," he said, solemnly. "I want to take you on a date. You and me. No errands to run, no Shaun, no work, no . . . being on the run from the law. And no Origami Killer."

She thought about it, tonguing crumbs from between her teeth. "Wow," she said, finally. "Yeah. I mean, you're right, we sort of – yeah, okay. Tonight?"

"If you can. Whenever you want to."

"Let's do it," she said, decisively. "If I'm going to be busy tonight, though, there's some stuff I should probably do today." Only half-aware that she was covering her sudden shyness, she bolted the rest of her breakfast as she rose to her feet, and dumped the dishes in the sink. She pounded back up the stairs she'd so recently fallen down, grinning incredulously, shaking her head. A date.

Back in the kitchen, Ethan rinsed out the dishrag, enjoying his own private smile, and set about making some phone calls. By the time she made it back downstairs, showered and dressed, bag packed, he looked slyly satisfied with himself.

"Okay," she said. "I think I've got everything I need to do work for a while. Until Monday, really, just in case. I'll call you if I figure out I left something important behind. Um, so, tonight. What are we . . . when . . ."

"It's a surprise," he said. "I'll pick you up at six. Don't eat first. Dress warm, nothing fancy, and bring your camera."

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I always bring my camera. Are you planning something horrible?"

"Yes," he said, proudly. "We're going to shoot rats at the city dump, and then eat them."

She let her mouth gape in a disbelieving laugh. "Boy," she said. "Somebody sure cranked your knob up to eleven this morning. Fine, keep your secret." She turned her back on him and headed out the front door, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her curiosity. Property records today, she decided. Boring stuff, but potentially vital background information to see just how far wide and how far back the Origami Killer's reach had spread, and she might as well do it before the county courthouse closed for the weekend.

When Ethan buzzed her apartment that night, she ran downstairs to meet him at the front door, one of her better cameras slung over one shoulder. "You look nice," he said.

"I remembered I owned makeup," she said. She was, as instructed, casually dressed, wearing a long, warm coat, but she'd fussed over her face and hair, feeling nervous, then feeling silly about feeling nervous. "I only put it on for scumbags and you."

It wasn't that cold an evening, not yet, and she left her coat unbuttoned. They got in the car; he still refused to disclose their destination. To her surprise, they drove deeper into the city, through the fashionable restaurant district, towards the industrial park. He finally brought the car to a stop outside a large warehouse, not unlike the one they'd found Shaun in.

"What, here?" she said.

"Yep." Ethan got out, swung a backpack out of the back seat, and came around to open her door for her while she was still squinting at the building, confused. She followed him to a small side door, which he had to wrestle with to unlock. Finally, he managed it.

"Okay," he said. "Close your eyes." She did, squinting them shut. She heard the door open, then a click, and the low hum of fluorescent lighting. His footsteps crunched back towards her, and he took her elbow. "Okay, I'll tell you when you can open them." He led her through the door, which creaked shut behind them, and gripped her from behind, by both elbows. "Aaaaaand . . . _now_."

Her eyes flew open. She shrieked, and turned around, pressing her face into his shoulder, squeezing him hard. "_Oh my GOD_," she squealed. "_What the FUCK_ _is that?_" She peered back over her shoulder in shock, let her eyes track over the length of the room.

They were at the mercy of an enormous spider, a spider the size of a house. Its front legs were curled threateningly around them, reaching behind them, and its alien, impassive face loomed over them. The warehouse was huge, and the spider's gangling frame filled most of it. Its front legs were braced low against the floor, the rear ones high against the walls, its abdomen pressed up into a corner of the ceiling, its many-eyed face bent low towards them, as though it were preparing to lunge downwards. It appeared to be made entirely out of scrap metal.

She tore her eyes away from it to look up at Ethan's face. He was smiling shyly at her, as though he'd just given her a gift he wasn't sure she liked. She shook her head at him, speechless, and looked back up at the spider's face. It glowered at her.

"A friend of mine made it," Ethan said, softly. "Is making it. He's not done. An engineer I've worked with. It's all pieces of old cars. Do you see the bumpers there, on the legs?"

She couldn't get enough of looking. Now that she knew what she was looking at, she could see all of the individual parts that composed it – not just the bumpers, but the door panels that patterned its abdomen, the stiff hairs poking out of it that were actually windshield wipers, the smaller, strange pieces from somewhere in the engine block that made up its mandibles.

". . . this," she said, slowly, "Is your idea of a romantic first date?"

"It's my idea of something I thought you might like to see," he said. "I wanted to do something amazing for you, but I couldn't think of anything, so I thought I could _show_ you something amazing, instead."

She looked back at him. His smile had faded a little; he looked uncertain. "You," she murmured, "Are a man with hidden depths." Impulsively, she wrapped one hand around the back of his head, and pulled him in to kiss him hard on the mouth. "I love it," she said, as they pulled apart, and his face lit up with relief.

He gave her a squeeze, then let go. "I thought you'd like to take some pictures," he said. "I'm going to get dinner set up. Go ahead, check it out. I can help you with the ladder if you want to see the top of it better." He headed between the spider's legs towards what looked like a small office in the back of the warehouse.

"Is it safe?" she asked, regarding the spindly legs nervously.

"Well, I wouldn't climb on it," he called back. "But Pete knows what he's doing, mostly. As much as anyone _can_ know what they're doing with this thing."

She backed all the way up to the doorway they'd come through so she could see the monster in its entirety, then moved forward under its belly, taking it in as she went. More and more details popped out to her, of the various identifiable and unidentifiable car parts, all in various stages of rust and wear. She could see, too, the parts that were unfinished – the gaping holes in the underside, the tattered top where the spinnerets should be. There was an untidy spread of welding gear and other tools on the floor that she carefully picked her way through.

Ethan emerged from the office, dragging a folded card table and two chairs, as she unpacked her camera.

"What is he doing this for?" Madison asked. "It's not like he can take it somewhere when he's done."

Ethan shrugged, and began setting up the card table where they'd first stood, directly in the spider's line of sight. "Because he's crazy, I guess. He's been doing it for years. I think he's one of those guys who wanted to go to art school, but became a structural engineer because he knew he wouldn't make any money as an artist, then started doing this for fun because he hates his job."

"Poor guy," she pondered, lining up her first shot.

"Oh, I don't know. I think he's pretty lucky. I'm jealous of what he's done here."

As Madison wandered around the spider, finding details, trying to find ways to express its scale on film, Ethan began unloading the backpack onto the table.

"Ready when you are," he finally called after her, hands in his pockets.

She came trotting back and laughed at the dinner, spread out in plastic containers – a bowl of salad, French bread, a deli rotisserie chicken, a thermos, a bottle of wine. They both had plastic mugs and paper plates and napkins.

"The chicken got cold," he said, apologetically. "But the cider stayed pretty hot, if you want to warm up. Sorry it's chilly in here. Pete said the space heater was broken. If we get really desperate, we can warm ourselves over the acetylene torch. We'd lose our eyebrows, but we'd be warm."

"God," she laughed. "This is so _classy_. _I_ will take some of that wine." He uncorked it, smiling, and poured some into her mug as she seated herself.

"I don't actually own any wineglasses," he said, and replaced the cork, then settled into his chair and reached for the thermos.

"Aren't you going to have any?" she asked. "Don't make me drink alone."

"No," he said, shaking his head, "I can't. Still working on the last of the painkillers they gave me; it still hurts just to breathe without them. That's why I've been so woozy all week. I'm only taking half a pill now, but, you know."

"Come on," she said, and gave him a wicked grin. "Just a little. Just to toast with."

He hesitated, then put down the thermos and grabbed the bottle again. "All right," he said, "But you might have to drive me home."

They tapped glasses in the plastic version of a clink, and raised them.

"To surviving," said Madison.

He considered her thoughtfully. "I don't know," he said. "I think we did a little better than that."

"All right, then." She thought. "To being amazing."

"I don't know if we did _that_ well."

"Like hell we didn't. Shut up and drink already."


	7. Chapter 7

Their conversation over dinner drifted. Madison expressed admiration again for the spider's intricacy.

"I'd like to come back again during the day sometime," she said. "To get it in natural light. Tonight's shots will be nice for future reference, but the fluorescent is not so good for pictures."

"Oh," Ethan responded, taken aback. "Sorry, I guess I didn't think."

"God, _enough_, you have absolutely nothing to apologize for. This is great. Just the two of us." She looked up into the mandibles and amended, "Three of us."

"It's a she, you know. Pete calls it Charlotte. Calls her Charlotte. He talks about her a lot."

"What, like _Charlotte's Web_?"

Ethan nodded. "He's, uh. He's single."

"I can't imagine why."

They talked a little about the change in the fall weather, about how her writing was progressing. She fussed over the troublesome words on her laptop, talking spitefully behind their back about their problems and issues.

"So what do you think about this week?" she asked, when she was done trashing her work. "Do you think Grace has forgiven you?"

"I don't know," he said, thoughtfully. "We haven't talked today. I'm guessing she'll sort of question Shaun over the weekend and then we'll talk on Monday when she drops him off. But I feel good about this week. The house is pretty much back together, Shaun's settled in. I'm feeling a lot better. I picked up some design jobs to work on, and even got some of it done after you left this morning. I made some doctors' appointments, and I wrote them down so I'll keep them."

"Boy," she responded. "You really are a lot happier when you've got stuff sort of . . . all in place."

He thought about that for a minute. "I think so," he said, slowly. "It doesn't take much for me, really. You're right, I don't like it when there's a lot of confusion, when I feel helpless. When I have to _admit_ I feel helpless. When there's a lot of fuss, or noise, or people, especially people. But when I can count on things not getting out of control, when I've got things I can rely on, I think I'm a pretty contented guy."

"You're taking a big chance on me, then." She raised an eyebrow at him challengingly.

"No," he said, thoughtfully, shaking his head. "No, I don't think so. You're a lot of things, but unreliable is not one of them. Exciting is not the same thing as unreliable. And uncontrollable is not the same as out of control." She squeezed his hand, and this time, he kissed her, tasting of wine and salad dressing.

She finished his plastic mug of wine for him, but he still looked a little sleepy as they talked on; it made her think of his face in bed.

"Thanks for doing the interviews," she said. "I know they haven't been easy for you. To talk, or to listen, either, probably."

"No," he said shortly, and she took the hint, teasing him instead about his failure to provide dessert. She steered the conversation towards the present, the week to come, and then their different experiences of the city – favorite places to visit, eat, see. He was a homebody, compared to her. She felt like she could see his whole world – a string of comfortable, familiar places and people, his job, Shaun. It was a small, cozy world, she thought.

And, immediately, it felt like a trap, it was so small. Madison looked away from him, up into Charlotte's gaping mouth.

"Are you okay to drive?" she asked. "I'm getting kind of cold." It wasn't a complete lie; the evening had chilled as it got later.

"Yeah, I think so," he answered, heavy-lidded. "I'm tired, but not wiped out. Do I seem okay to you?"

"You sound focused enough. Take me home," she said imperiously.

"Oh." He sounded startled. "I sort of thought . . ."

"That I was the kind of girl who'd go all the way on the first date? You cad."

He smiled at that. "All right, fair enough." Together, they messily stowed the dinner materials in his backpack; he announced aloud that he'd clean up the rest the next day, and they got back in his car.

"That really was . . . good," she said, lamely, as he drove, cranking up the heat a little. "Definitely not what I was expecting."

"You weren't expecting good?" Ethan smiled at her. "Thanks."

"I was expecting shooting rats at the dump," she responded archly, tracing a line in the condensation on the inside of her window.

They parted awkwardly; Madison leant across the console between seats to hug him carefully, sideways, and gave him a final peck on the cheek. "Thanks again," she said. "You'll call me about Monday? If you need me or not?"

"Yeah, of course," he responded, and squeezed her in return. "I'm glad you liked Charlotte. We can go back again sometime during the day, Pete won't mind. Just let me know."

"Uh-huh," she stammered, and wriggled free. "Good night. Talk to you soon."

Ethan watched her disappear inside, wondered if he should have offered to go up with her. He knew he'd screwed something up, somewhere, but couldn't quite determine what it was, what he'd said. His shoulders slumped a little as he tried to determine whether maybe he _was_ a little too fuzzy to be driving, then he shook his head, and set off for home. He'd try to work it out in the morning.

Inside her apartment, Madison tossed her coat off. She threw herself in an armchair, put her head in her hands, grabbed her hair, and groaned.

"I am _not_," she announced aloud to the apartment, "Old enough to have a ten-year-old kid." It answered her with empty, vast indifference. The way she felt right now, she didn't even feel old enough to be married, to be an _adult_. "Dammit, dammit, _dammit_." Her clothes barely made their way into the hamper before she fell into bed. She glared out the window.

She woke up in the middle of the night and took a minute to try to figure out what the noise had been that had woken her. As she started to get up, swinging her feet to the floor, hands came out from under the bed and grabbed her ankles, making her fall, dragging her back under the bed at an impossible angle. She could hear her bones snapping as her body was forced into that narrow space, and woke up for real just before it sucked her entirely into the void. Madison cried a little into her pillow, then got up, turned on the television, and watched infomercials until she drifted off again around dawn.

Saturday was not terribly productive; she slept late, lots of the people she wanted to talk to were hard to track down over the weekend, and most of her other notes, plus the recorder, were still at Ethan's. She spent some time instead down at the police station, getting both hostile scowls and smiles of warm admiration, teasing out what information she could on the investigation on Doctor Adrian Baker's murders. She found enough sympathetic faces to at least make the trip worthwhile.

That evening, she returned to her apartment, threw her keys on the table, and rummaged through her kitchen. Her stay with Ethan meant that her own grocery situation had become dire, and she stuck her tongue out at the onions and condiments in the fridge before digging through her store of emergency canned soup. Eating it, she plugged in her digital camera – she'd have to work on getting her film prints developed Monday – and began sorting through which pictures were usable and which were discards. Suddenly, she hit the first shot of Ethan and Shaun, passed out together on the sofa, and choked a little on the soup. She'd forgotten they were on there.

She studied all three of them thoughtfully, evaluating. Ethan would like one, she was sure. Her home printer was crap, but she bet she could slip through a nice print at the newspaper. She picked one, saved it to her portable drive, and then scowled at her soup, jabbing at it sulkily.

"Madison Paige," she said aloud, "Just go. _Go. Move your ass._"

She'd spent all afternoon trying to ignore the little voice at the back of her brain telling her that she didn't want to sleep alone in her apartment again that night. And that she not only had a place she _didn't_ want to sleep, she had a place she _did_ want to be instead. Where she was pretty sure that someone else wanted her to be, too. She didn't want that little voice to win.

She snorted as she pondered the competition between them. "And what are _you_ winning by staying here?" That was all it took. Her backpack was full again in five minutes; she was back on her motorcycle in eight.

She didn't bother to knock, but pushed open Ethan's unlocked front door and shed her possessions in the entryway, much the way Shaun tended to do.

Ethan was sitting on the sofa, TV turned down low, stacks of mail sorted into piles on the floor in front of him. Still getting his house in order. He was looking up, startled, from a letter in his hands.

"Hi," he said uncertainly. "I wasn't expecting you. Did you forget something you need?"

"I forgot that my apartment doesn't have you in it."

He gave her one of his sudden, brilliant smiles, and she impulsively sat next to him, drawing her feet up and swinging them across his legs so that she was curled up around his lap. She kissed him on the corner of the jaw. "You smell like bleach," she said.

"I cleaned the bathroom," he responded, abandoning the letter to wrap his arms around her legs. "I don't remember being that bad at aiming pee when I was ten."

"You almost certainly were. All boys are. Growing up with my brothers, I don't think I knew what a clean toilet looked like until I was eighteen and went off to school."

"I don't think I want to talk tonight," he said, softly. "About everything."

"Good," she said. "I need a break, too. Actually, you know, I don't think I care if I ever see that damn tape recorder again. I don't think I want to listen to all that. All that . . . blood and crying and exhaustion. The words are sort of written permanently inside my head, anyway. Do you think it helped, though?"

"Yeah, I think so." He rubbed his thumbs against her knees. "Much more than I expected. Maybe more than I deserve."

"I already told you to stop being a moron. A couple of times, I think. That's what I'm supposed to be doing when I'm here, isn't it, helping you out with the stuff you can't do on your own?" For an answer, he leaned his head against hers. "If you don't need to talk tonight, can you think of anything else you need? Because I can. Something _I_ need." His mouth worked its way around to her earlobe, and she shivered. "Oh, _good_," she continued. "I thought you'd never ask. Carry me up the stairs?"

". . . not if you don't want to be dropped a few times."

"My hero. Fine, I guess my legs work."

It was slow, and gentle, and sleepy, and quiet; they were careful with each other. By the end of it, they were pleasantly weary, curled face to face.

He crept one hand gently up her spine to rub fondly at the nape of her neck. "I need the drawing table tomorrow," he murmured, and she smiled in the dark at the mundanity of it. "Have some work to do. I don't want to interrupt you. I can do everything in here, or downstairs, but I might need your help moving the table."

"Yeah," she agreed. "That study is kind of small for both of us to try to get stuff done in it. I can just drag my laptop downstairs, though, that might be easier."

"I've been thinking about trying to get a new place, anyway. This one has a lot of old, bad memories in it. And things I don't remember, but that I know happened. Those are pretty bad, too."

"Yeah, you should probably move. But if it's a place I'm going to be writing in, I get to help pick it out."

He kissed her palm softly, and she ran her foot up and down his leg for a little while, until both of them were ready for sleep. In the morning, neither of them could remember any dreams.

* * *

**A/N: **Yeah, I know how random the giant spider thing is. But, you know, I worked for a while with architects and engineers, and some of them have the _craziest damn side projects_. I met a guy who built his own castle, once, and one who spent all his free time designing and building amphibious vehicles. True? _Yes_. Charlotte is based, in part, on the work of Tom Every, aka Dr. Evermor. If you do a Google image search for "Dr Evermor," you'll see what I mean.

Again, I think this works, though I pretty much screwed up a lot of the beginning because I didn't know what I was going to do with the end. That's mostly fixed now, I hope. Thanks for the feedback I got on my Ethan being dull; I tried to at least make him a little more human. You know what? He is dull. He is not an exciting person. He _knows_ exciting people, and exciting things happen to him, but he really just wants to keep his head down and keep going, and that's okay. He's allowed.


End file.
